


Drowning in Sorrow

by harrietscats



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Attempted Murder, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Deception, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hawke & Varric Tethras Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Magisters, Multi, Murder, Orlesian Culture and Customs, Post Game, Pre Trespasser, Spoilers, Tevinter Culture and Customs, The Game, Varric Tethras is a Good Friend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 20:50:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14985320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietscats/pseuds/harrietscats
Summary: Corypheus is no more. The familial quarrel rending the Dales is quieted. Fereldan is eking its way back to their pre-Blight glory. And at Skyhold, Scout Bree Allsop freezes atop the ancient ramparts, and informs the Commander of the Inquisition’s forces that the Inquisitor is dead.





	Drowning in Sorrow

Elf magic. That was what the Inquisition scouts murmured over ales.  _ “Have you ever wondered why it’s so warm here, and cold enough to freeze your tits off when you step out those gates?”  _ Elf magic. They needed no more explanation than that. New pilgrims eagerly nodded and deferred to the explanation, unwilling to question and be branded upstarts. Bree Allsop said nothing, drank what was given to her, and nodded along to the tales the more seasoned officers spun. 

 

There were a lot of elves at Skyhold. Bree had never seen one up close before. Her family seldom visited the larger cities of Redcliffe and Denerim. They bred sheepdogs on the outskirts of Honnleath, cared little for politics, and even littler for those who lived any further than Redcliffe.  _ “Alien,”  _ she recalled her father saying one night.  _ “Bloody alien, them knife-ears. I’ll never understand them.”  _

 

In all honesty, Bree didn’t quite understand them, either. There was the mouthy elf with a Denerim accent so thick she could taste the cobblestones of an alienage every time she opened her mouth. Then there was the other elf, the one who was seldom seen outside of his rotunda. Bree saw him painting once on her way to report to Sister Leliana, a massive fresco that required meticulously erected scaffolding to properly birth. She paused, drinking in the animated lines and simplistic-but-not-really architecture of each work, intrigued in a way that her father would have never been. 

 

He paused, offered her a respectful nod, and she hurried away, feeling as if she had been weighed, and been found wanting. 

 

And then there was the Inquisitor. 

 

Half of the scouting corps swore she didn’t exist. The other half claimed to have seen her wrestle both an archdemon and a darkspawn magister with one arm. They called her Herald sometimes.  _ The Herald of Andraste.  _ Bree had caught glimpses of her sometimes, a figure clad in red and black hurrying up the stairs to the main keep, or visiting the tavern where Bree and her friends drank (respectfully keeping distance between themselves and the Bull’s Chargers). Sometimes she spotted the Inquisitor on the ramparts, staring at something only she could see.

 

She was an elf. But a different kind of elf. Sister Leliana didn’t reproach her when Bree asked, almost ashamed, what the difference was between the Inquisitor and the elves in her inner circle. 

 

“Inquisitor Lavellan is Dalish.” That was all Sister Leliana would say, before launching into a detailed report on the current division of de Chalons and Valmont chevaliers in the Exalted Plains. 

 

Elf magic. She wondered which one would answer her question. The Denerim elf wasn’t a mage; she wrinkled her snub nose whenever the subject was brought up. “Too elfy,” she had said to one of the Chargers. The old elf would have answered, but approaching him required a special kind of courage Bree never had the strength to muster. It was impossible to ask now, even if she could. 

 

Nine companions had left Skyhold to reseal the Breach. Eight returned. The Inquisitor’s face was thunderous—the old elf was gone, not dead, but gone—and Sister Leliana had set Lace and Bree and a handful of their best trackers after him. 

 

But he had vanished, as if he had never existed. 

 

And she couldn’t just ask the Inquisitor. 

 

The ramparts were frigid, in comparison to the tavern, the armory, or even the gardens. Something supernatural kept the hold warm, but only to a certain point. Bree shivered and forced herself to think warm thoughts. The moon hung, fat and proud in the sky. If she concentrated, she could see her breath. 

 

Bree loathed sentry duty. She loved scouting. It was what brought her from her sleepy little Honnleath farm. But the Commander had ordered extra eyes after the loss of Haven, and even though the so-called Elder One and his army of magisters no longer posed a significant threat, their numbers were not reduced. 

 

And Sister Leliana had acquiesced, barely. 

 

Regardless, she had one more lap to make around the ramparts (including the Commander’s office), and then she would go to bed and sleep until the sun was high in the sky. It was her due—she had been deployed for weeks, slept little in the high trees of the Emerald Graves, and even littler under the eaves of ruins built by a different, older kind of elf. 

 

Like the one who had imbued the frescoes in the atrium of Sister Leliana’s rookery with a sort of haunting beauty. 

 

Blowing on her fingers in a vain attempt to warn them, Bree took her lantern in hand and walked west, aiming to make the loop as quickly and efficiently as possible. Ellen had promised to save her some steak and potato mash from dinner. It would be ice cold by now, but the very thought of it made her mouth water after weeks of surviving off of hard biscuits and jerky. 

 

That was the next thing she was going to put in her list of demands that would never find its way to Sister Leliana’s desk. Warm coats for the cold of Skyhold, and edible rations for the road. 

 

Most of the towers she entered were still in ruins. Bree had to pick her way carefully passed fallen stone and wood and vines itching to reclaim what had been stolen. Some of the dwarves on the reconstruction team had finally removed some of the old furniture. She swore she saw a mattress moving in the courtyard the other day, as if possessed, but before she could comment on it, Charter had challenged her to a game of Wicked Grace and Bree couldn’t refuse. 

 

Her smalls were still tacked on a Chantry board in the garden. She needed to win back some of her dignity. 

 

Unhinging the door to the keep, Bree shivered at the drastic change in temperature. The work crews had retired for the night; Madame de Fer had retired from where she played court: the chaise lounge that overlooked the courtyard below. Walking by with her lantern aloft, Bree wrinkled her nose. It smelled like an Orlesian salon, looked like an Orlesian salon, or the salon of the Madame’s Circle tower. 

 

Mages. Bree remembered her sister, just shy of two, giggling as she made snow in midsummer. Remembered her crying, child voice screaming for their mother, who watched dead eyed from the porch as Templars took her away. 

 

Mare was at Ostwick, last her family heard. Mare wrote often, in impeccable penmanship that testified a Circle education. 

Bree hadn’t been able to track her down after the Circles fell. She prayed her baby sister was safe. It was all she could do. 

 

Bree maneuvered her way around the scaffolding the Orzammar native had erected. She didn’t relish returning to the cold, but she was more than halfway done. All she needed to do was check two more rooms, poke her head into the Commander’s quarters, and make her way back to the barracks to shake Kevan awake. Then her dinner was hers, and she would finally be able to answer correspondence from her family, and friends in the field keeping both eyes peeled for any sign of a twelve year old mage with curly blonde hair and the demeanor of a sheepdog. 

 

Bracing herself, Bree tucked her chin into the thick wool scarf her father had sent her (along with gran’s apple turnovers), and prayed to the Maker for mercy. 

 

Or warmer clothes. 

 

The cold slapped her in the face. Elf magic went so far, she was violently reminded. Bree shivered and forced her fingers to keep hold of her lantern. A storm cloud hung low over the Frostbacks, pregnant with thunder and snow. It obscured the moon; the only light came from the tavern, the few repaired braziers, and another, bobbing light on the wall above the stables. 

 

Bree squinted. The darkness did little to enhance her vision. The light wavered, no brighter than a candle. Perhaps the Inquisitor found herself enjoying the chill and wished to stargaze. Or peruse a book from the rookery’s library. 

 

Stargazing. That had been the first time Bree had spoken with the Inquisitor. It was a night not unlike this, Bree freezing on the ramparts, lantern on the stone before her, hands tucked into her armpits, glaring at the frigid waters far below as if they were the reason for her suffering. So entranced with her own misery, Bree ashamedly jumped when a light voice in a Marcher accent spoke: 

 

“Damn, I thought I had this rampart booked tonight. I’ll have to speak with Josie.”

 

She saw the Inquisitor a handful of times: in passing at the Herald’s Rest, sitting in the nook with the Tevinter mage, whittling with their Warden by the stables. But Bree never had the opportunity to actually speak with her. The tales the scouts and lieutenants and soldiers told all spoke of a woman eight feet tall, who rode to victory on the back of a griffon and tore out the throats of darkspawn with her own teeth, Blight sickness be damned. She was not expecting the elf she saw that night: small, as far as Bree’s understanding of elves went, clad in a sleep shift and a thick, well loved blanket draped around her shoulders. She carried no lantern or candle with her; her left hand was held aloft, holding a friendly mote of fire no bigger than her fist. Her white hair was long and curly and unbound. Her eyes were mischievous, full of mirth and lacking the reproach the sentence should have held. She looked...human. Or would have looked human. Her eyes were too large, her skin almost luminous with magic. Though Bree could barely see it, the Inquisitor’s pointed ears peeked out from underneath the curtain of hair, and then there were the tattoos. It looked as if someone had painted a tree on her brow and the bridge of her nose, and lined the underneath of her eyes in a shade of purple it looked almost black in the moonlight. 

 

“Inquisitor, I—sorry, it’s just—I thought,” babbled Bree, struggling to find words as the Inquisitor’s eyebrow arched into her hairline in affectionate bemusement. “...sentry duty?” 

 

She smiled, showcasing dimples and freckles. It was an endearing smile, one that made her heart leap into her throat. 

 

“Cullen is too cautious,” said the Inquisitor. “I doubt he would find fault if you joined me.”

 

Bree stammered, mouth opening and closing in a show of speechless stupidity. Again the Inquisitor smiled. 

 

“Here.” She removed the thick knitted blanket from around her shoulders, and offered it to Bree, who was trying very hard not to shiver. “You look like you need it more than me.”

 

“Inquisitor, I couldn’t,” Bree said, proud she was able to utter her first intelligent sentence. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”

 

“I insist.”

 

Bree smiled fondly at the memory. They had talked long into the night, long past when Bree should have woken her replacement. The Inquisitor—Asdetheara,  _ “Or Dea, if you prefer. My Keeper liked long names.” _ —had spent most of that time asking after Bree: where she was from, where her family was, if she had siblings. 

 

The look on her face when Bree told her about Mare made her heart shudder. 

 

“She was at Ostwick, you say?” she had asked, staring so intently at Bree, she feared she would shatter. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“Inquisitor—” Bree began her protest, but the Inquisitor cut her off with a look. And no more was said on the subject. 

 

Bree took brief refuge in a tower that had yet to be cleared out. It reeked of wet rot and something long decayed. It was warmer than outside, but only just. She took the time to shake the snow from her hair—Bree thanked the Maker that it had begun to snow as she was about to complete her rounds—and stamped her feet to dislodge the frost. She hoped the Commander was up, he would be able to ask Eustace to add heavy coats to their long list of requisitions. They were planning to send an advance party to the Emprise. If the rumors coming out of the Dalish highlands were to be believed, they would need them anyway. 

 

Thus fortified, and unashamedly rehearsing her request in her head (Did he answer to Knight-Commander, or just Commander?), Bree unhinged the door to the next section of ramparts, and walked briskly to the broken tower the Commander had taken as his own. Visibility was poor, and becoming poorer as the storm began to divest its payload on the unsuspecting keep. Her lantern did little to illuminate the path before her; muscle memory was the only thing keeping her from bumping into stone, or falling to her death. 

 

Bree knocked politely on the Commander’s door, and when she heard his call to enter, she did. 

 

The Commander was seated at his desk, clad in his ever present armor, thick mantle, and overclothes. His hair was mussed, curls escaping their usual order in favor of loosely cascading over his forehead and down his neck. He looked up from whatever correspondence had stolen his attention so completely at the late hour to look at Bree, who closed her right hand in a fist and laid it over her heart. 

 

“Commander Rutherford,” she greeted. “I apologize for the late hour.”

 

“Scout Allsop, is everything alright?” he asked, sounding both alert and tired all at once. 

 

“Quiet so far, ser. Though a storm does seem to be rolling off the Frostbacks.”

 

“Does it look bad?” The Commander seemed drained, looked drained. Bree watched him shuffle papers around, searching for something that eluded him. He recovered it eventually: a report one page in length, slightly crumpled from its place beneath the leg of his chair. “Damn—the meteorologist said nothing about foul weather, not for days.”

 

“Perhaps the Breach stirred up the snowfall, ser,” posited Bree. 

“I’ll be sure to alert Scout Beaumont when I wake him. Other than the impending snowstorm, all seems to be quiet.”

 

“Good.” The Commander sighed, slumped a little. “Quiet is good.” When Bree did not ask permission to leave, her superior eyed her suspiciously. “Was there something else you needed, Scout Allsop?”

 

Bree swallowed, throat suddenly dry. 

 

“Not exactly, Commander,” she began. “But it is a...request, of sorts.” 

 

Cullen looked momentarily annoyed. His fingers tightened imperceptibly on his quill. Bree faltered, but did not retreat.  “Shouldn’t you take something like this up with Sister Leliana?”

 

“Normally, yes, ser. But when it regards members of the soldiery, she defers to you.”

 

Bree could have sworn she heard the Commander mumble “Typical,” under his breath. 

 

“As you’ve no doubt noticed, ser,” Bree said, holding her lantern just the slightest bit too close to her body for comfort, “the entire keep is warm, except for the ramparts, and the roof of the barn. Those stuck on sentry are coming down with colds from freezing up here six to eight hours a night. I know we’re due to set out for the Emprise in a few nights—just four of us, I know—but no one has requisitioned heavier clothes for us. And if it’s as bad as they say there, then the army might follow, unprepared for the cold weather.”

 

Cullen pursed his lips and steepled his fingers. 

 

“No heavy coats have come? I could have sworn some were rescued from Haven.”

 

Bree shifted from foot to foot. Her stomach grumbled unhappily.

 

“Those we did manage to save went to the villagers,” Bree explained. “And any we wore went as well. They left with nothing, ser. We couldn’t let them freeze.”

 

Cullen’s gaze softened. 

 

“That was very kind of you, Scout Allsop,” he said. He opened a drawer in his desk and withdrew a slip of paper. He scribbled down a few sentences, then handed it over. “Take this to Ser Morris in the morning. If he doesn’t fulfill the requisition by sundown tomorrow, tell him I’ll have his hide.”

 

Bree blushed. “Yes ser, thank you so much ser, if you ever need anything—” 

 

“Finish your rounds and make a sterling report for Sister Leliana. And let me know how it goes with Ser Morris tomorrow.”

 

Bree nodded and took her leave. It was far colder out than it had been when she first entered the Commander’s chambers. Visibility was so poor, it was almost useless to continue. The slip of paper, Bree tucked into her trouser pocket. They needed those coats with a desperation bordering on despair. She was ready to ride for Jader or Redcliffe, their need was so dire. But she hoped a letter from the Commander of the Inquisition’s armed forces would chivvy the quartermaster along. 

 

The sole of her boot made an odd sound, not unlike the sound of something tacky being pulled apart. Bree had a sudden, vivid memory of spilling sugar syrup on the floor, the wood boards remaining sticky no matter how many times she scrubbed. Intrigued, Bree knelt fingers brushing through the snow. Her fingertips were frigid, half buried; they dragged through something wet, and when she brought them back to her face for inspection, they were red with blood. 

 

Bree felt her heart stop. She had seen blood before, in the Graves and the Plains and every month or so if she was vigilant with her Lady’s mantle. But that was outside, where it was a given. This was  _ Skyhold.  _ Bastion of safety. Untouchable. 

 

She raised her lantern. Not a meter away, a book lay buried in the snow, and with it…

 

Bree scrambled forward, heart in her throat. Lantern discarded in haste, Bree grabbed for the book with both hands, roughly scrubbing the snow from its cover, praying— _ praying to Andraste, the Maker, the Elvhen gods the Inquisitor drew in the sky for Bree— _ that the book was coincidental. That the blanket was just a blanket. 

 

_ “Sulhan, Dirtha’vhen’an: Collected Works from the Fall of Arlathan”  _

 

She cursed. 

 

There was more blood, blood on the rock ledge, as if someone had been thrown against it. And a smell, like spiced rum and lyrium.

 

Magic. 

 

Magic had been done, the uncontrolled kind with no focus. No staff. Mare had smelled of that, though Bree did not know lyrium had a smell at the time. It was the smell of wild magic, untamed magic, the kind the mages now claimed to fight for. Scrambling, Bree saw ice. Scorch marks on the stone facing the courtyard, not the frigid river so far below. Her fingers touched a deep groove in the stone that had not been there before. 

 

There had been a fight. 

 

And no one had heard it. 

 

Suddenly afraid, Bree leant over the ramparts, hand shielding her eyes from the wind, scarf whipping about her face. She could barely see an inch before her nose, but she did see something flapping in the brick, trapped by the branches of the great tree that grew through the walls. 

 

“No.”

 

Bree couldn’t think. She bolted for the gatehouse, where the other sentry was stationed. The dwarf was seated with his nose in a very well worn edition of  _ “Tales of the Champion”.  _ He looked up with surprise when Bree charged in, bruised from her run-ins with door jambs. 

 

“Bree?”

 

“Did the Inquisitor come past, not thirty minutes ago?” She asked in one breath. Terror took decorum from her. Eckhart looked at his colleague, concerned. 

 

“Maybe more?” Elkhart replied. He scratched at his beard. “She asked me what I was reading, and when she saw, she rolled her eyes and commented on Deshyr Tethras turning her life into a book, too.” He took Bree in, watched her face crumple when she heard his answer. 

 

“Go see if she’s in her room. Get the scouts on alert if she’s not. Find the Inquisitor!”

 

Before Elkhart could ask why, Bree was on her way to the Commander’s office, feet skidding on the icy stones. She relied on touch and memory to guide her back; her eyelids were glued shut by cold. By terrified tears. She muscled her way into the Commander’s office as torches and braziers (those that were hale and whole) began lighting throughout Skyhold. Carried on the wind, she heard their cries:

 

_ “Inquisitor Lavellan!” _

 

_ “She’s not in her rooms, did someone check the Undercroft?” _

 

_ “The armory!” _

 

_ “Nothing! INQUISITOR?” _

 

The Commander looked up in surprise, taken aback at the flagrant breach of protocol as Bree muscled her way inside without so much as a knock. He was in a mild state of undress: mantle removed, breastplate and greaves removed. He had lathered his face; there was a small, handheld mirror sitting on his desk beside a wickedly sharp straight razor.  She had caught him undertaking his nightly ablutions, and he was not pleased in the slightest. 

 

“You had better have a damned good explanation…” threatened the Commander, baritone with rage. 

 

Bree couldn’t breathe. She was knelt double, frostbite reddening her cheeks and nose. Water streamed down her face as the ice melted from her eyes and hair and she was allowed to grieve. 

 

She could not say much, her throat right with emotion and lungs constricted from cold. But she did fine it in herself to say two words:

 

“Inquisitor...Lavellan.”

 

And the Commander went white like snow. 

 

He wiped his face of lather with a discarded towel and bolted for the door Bree had exited not minutes before. When Bree’s lungs found it in themselves to cooperate, she followed suit, following the Commander to the scene. He stood there, hands loose at his sides, underclothes turning stiff with cold. He stared at the blood, the ice, the gouges and scorch marks Bree had noted. 

 

Clenched in one hand was something she could not see, something Seeker Pentaghast (who arrived with shield bared and sword aloft) had to remove from his hands with careful motions, as if she were calming a wild animal. 

 

The massive Qunari with one eye took the stairs leading to this desolate stretch of architecture two at a time. Bree vaguely remembered drinking with him once. And walking funny for days. 

 

“We can’t find her,” he said. “Chargers are looking everywhere for her right now, but they’ve just about covered the keep.”

 

His eye found the object Seeker Pentaghast now held. She saw emotion in it: disbelief, rage, sorrow. His hands itched for something to hit, throw,  _ anything.  _

 

“Fuck, boss.”

 

They crowded the rampart, the Inquisitor’s inner circle—no, friends. The author bowed his head, muttered “Shit,” so quietly, it was but a whisper on the wind. Madame de Fer said nothing, closed her eyes and stared skyward. They gathered, muttering prayers to Andraste, the Maker, to an entity known only as “Lethanavir”. They passed the object that had rendered the Commander mute, the Seeker penitent, their company aggrieved, until Bree finally held it in her hands and understood its importance. 

 

It was a scarf, bright red, drenched with snowmelt and blood. Clinging to the folds of the fabric were a handful of strands of hair so white, they resembled starlight. Bree knew who it belonged to. It did not make it any easier. 

 

She looked at the Seeker, whose hand rested on the Commander’s shoulder, seeing but not seeing. All around her, people prayed. People sobbed. 

 

“Go back to the keep,” the Seeker finally said, authority heavy in her voice. “It does us no good to freeze out here. We will search in the morning.”  _ For the body.  _

 

Bree trembled. 

 

Never had she heard such hopelessness. 

 

She passed the odd boy who tagged along like a stray, sitting on the stairs as if their chill did not bother him. 

 

“Cold, so cold. Storm coming—should have brought a warmer blanket—what is he doing here?” 

 

Bree did not remember the rest. In fact, she did not remember returning to her bed, eating stone cold mash, tears trickling down her nose. 

 

Fell. 

 

She remembered that much. 

 

The Inquisitor had fallen. 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
